


What would you do for love?

by summer_of_1985



Series: You are the fond object of my affection and my desire [22]
Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Book: Anne of the Island - L. M. Montgomery Spoilers, F/M, Gilbert's Second Proposal, Including section from the book, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:34:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28108629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summer_of_1985/pseuds/summer_of_1985
Summary: Slight Gilbert's POV, from when he realised that he was in love with Anne Shirley. Until his second proposal.
Relationships: Gilbert Blythe/Anne Shirley, Royal "Roy" Gardner/Anne Shirley
Series: You are the fond object of my affection and my desire [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1611820
Comments: 4
Kudos: 27





	What would you do for love?

It was a few years after Anne had smashed her slate over his head, is when he realised that at the exact moment that he had fallen completely head-over-heels in love with one Anne Shirley.

Gilbert knew that, given the opportunity, he would do absolutely for Anne. He would move heaven and earth to make her happy, he would move mountains to see her smile. Nobody knows what Anne went through in the orphanage, not even Diana! He would trade his life for Matthews, just so she could have more years with her adoptive father.

After winning her hand in friendship, then losing her for 2 years- Gilbert was heartbroken. He had to watch with the shattered remains of his heart, as Anne wandered around the campus of Redmond college - with her arm linked with stupid Royal Gardiner, who took his Anne on expensive trips to restaurants and classy parties.

Then, after his month-long battle with typhoid - his loving mother told him that he had been calling out for Anne, Gilbert knew he would never ‘get over her’, Anne was firmly embedded in his heart - he would rather die as a bachelor, forever pining for Anne Shirley. He would rather do this than marry out of obligation.

A letter from Phil Blake, asked him to try again. That gave him the confidence to ask Anne again. Phil believed that Anne loved him. Surprisingly, Gilbert got over his bout of typhoid fairly quickly after that.

_ When Gilbert came the next afternoon he found Anne waiting for him, fresh as the dawn and fair as a star, after all the gaiety of the preceding night. She wore a green dress -- not the one she had worn to the wedding, but an old one which Gilbert had told her at a Redmond reception he liked especially. It was just the shade of green that brought out the rich tints of her hair, and the starry gray of her eyes and the iris-like delicacy of her skin. Gilbert, glancing at her sideways as they walked along a shadowy woodpath, thought she had never looked so lovely. Anne, glancing sideways at Gilbert, now and then, thought how much older he looked since his illness. It was as if he had put boyhood behind him forever. _

_ The day was beautiful and the way was beautiful. Anne was almost sorry when they reached Hester Gray's garden, and sat down on the old bench. But it was beautiful there, too -- as beautiful as it had been on the faraway day of the Golden Picnic, when Diana and Jane and Priscilla and she had found it. Then it had been lovely with narcissus and violets; now golden rod had kindled its fairy torches in the corners and asters dotted it bluely. The call of the brook came up through the woods from the valley of birches with all its old allurement; the mellow air was full of the purr of the sea; beyond were fields rimmed by fences bleached silvery gray in the suns of many summers, and long hills scarfed with the shadows of autumnal clouds; with the blowing of the west wind old dreams returned. _

_ "I think," said Anne softly, "that `the land where dreams come true' is in the blue haze yonder, over that little valley." _

_ "Have you any unfulfilled dreams, Anne?" asked Gilbert. _

_ Something in his tone -- something she had not heard since that miserable evening in the orchard at Patty's Place -- made Anne's heart beat wildly. But she made answer lightly. _

_ "Of course. Everybody has. It wouldn't do for us to have all our dreams fulfilled. We would be as good as dead if we had nothing left to dream about. What a delicious aroma that low-descending sun is extracting from the asters and ferns. I wish we could see perfumes as well as smell them. I'm sure they would be very beautiful." _

_ Gilbert was not to be thus sidetracked. _

_ "I have a dream," he said slowly. "I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends -- and YOU!" _

_ Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her. _

_ "I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?" _

_ Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer. _

_ They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall -- things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood. _

_ "I thought you loved Christine Stuart," Anne told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner. _

_Gilbert laughed boyishly._

_"Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely. So I did. And then I liked Christine for her own sake. She is one of the nicest girls I've ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn't care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else -- there never could be anybody else for me but you. I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school."_

_ "I don't see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool," said Anne. _

_ "Well, I tried to stop," said Gilbert frankly, "not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn't -- and I can't tell you, either, what it's meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Phil Gordon -- Phil Blake, rather -- in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to `try again.' Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that." _

_ Anne laughed -- then shivered. _

_ "I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew -- I KNEW then -- and I thought it was too late." _

_ "But it wasn't, sweetheart. Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything, doesn't it? Let's resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us." _

_ "It's the birthday of our happiness," said Anne softly. "I've always loved this old garden of Hester Gray's, and now it will be dearer than ever." _

_ "But I'll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne," said Gilbert sadly. "It will be three years before I'll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls." _

_ Anne laughed. _

_ "I don't want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I'm quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more `scope for imagination' without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn't matter. We'll just be happy, waiting and working for each other -- and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now." _

Gilbert smiled brightly at Anne, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a soft bag. “Anne, I have been in love with you since was 13. They say that a fellow can love a million women, but it's a man who can love one woman a million ways. That is exactly how I feel about you. There is no one else that I would to be with for the rest of my life," Gilbert tells her, as he gets down on to one knee - how he probably should have done it the first time around... Gilbert was still a little rusty with wandering around, so when he got down on one knee, he wobbled - which Anne helped him balance out. There were tears in her eyes and a massive smile on her face. " 3 years from now, will you marry me, my sweet Anne-girl?”

Anne also smiled brightly, taking Gilbert's hand that wasn't holding the soft bag. "Yes," she tells him.

The bright smile on Gilbert's, widened even more. Gilbert got up off his knee (with a little bit of help from Anne), he opened the bag and tipped it into his palm. "I know it's not much," Gilbert tells her, the ring now hanging between his thumb and forefinger. "But, once I'm a doctor and we have a decent amount of money, I'll get you one that is better,"

Anne shakes her head, "I don't want any other ring. It's perfect, Gil," Anne answers, shuffling closer to Gilbert - now her fiancé. She held her hand out to him, to which he put her engagement ring on. "Gil, it's beautiful."

Gilbert smiled at his Anne. His Anne-girl, his best friend, the love of his life, his fiancée, the future Mrs. Doctor Blythe, the future mother of his child(ren). "Ma gave it to me, after I was able to get out of bed, and was walking up and down the stairs. She must have read the letter that Phil sent to me. She gave it to me the other day,"

Anne looked down at her engagement ring. A beautiful circlet of pearls, a Blythe family heirloom. Nearly 3 years from now, Anne will be a Blythe - she'll be Gilbert's wife. A bride for a day, a wife for the rest of her life. "I love you, Gil,"

Those 4 words, those simple words. He's been waiting to hear them come from Anne's lips for so long. "You will never know how much and how long I have been waiting to hear those words,"

_ Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew. _


End file.
